links for 2009-02-23

"Talk about adding insult to injury. Apparently Microsoft has inadvertently overpaid severance to some of its recently laid off employees, and is now asking for some of the money back. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s unclear how many of the 1,400 employees laid off last month were affected, but weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve confirmed that it wasnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t a single isolated incident (weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve contacted Microsoft for a response). WeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re also hearing that some employees may have been underpaid as well."

"Here at the Yorkshire Evening Post we recognise that life is local. That's why we have launched a new series of community websites featuring all things local to your neighbourhood. Check out our new community websites all featuring local news, sport and entertainment on your doorstep."

"The top stories from the ultra-local sites will now appear on the Evening Gazette's homepage and the move is aimed at integrating the local sites with the newspaper brands to draw people into the main site, rather than simply finding it through search."

"Arguably the biggest thing that has changed in countries like the UK since there was last a major recession is that most people are networked by the internet and have some experience of its potential for self-organisation (whether through a myriad of internet dating sites, or through group social interactions such as Facebook, Meetup, Bebo, MySpace, and others – all carry the potential to connect people, both in the virtual and in the physical space). There has never been a major surge in unemployment in a context where these ways of "organising without organisations" were available."

"But Last.fm came out fighting. After its New York-based CBS (NYSE: CBS) spokesperson told TechCrunch Ã¢â‚¬Å“To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAAÃ¢â‚¬Â, Richard Jones (pictured), one of the three remaining co-founders in London, wrote in the siteÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s comments after midnight: Ã¢â‚¬Å“IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m rather pissed off this article was published, except to say that this is utter nonsense and totally untrue. As far as I can tell, the author of this article got a Ã¢â‚¬ËœtipÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ from one person and decided to make a story out of it. TechCrunch is full of shit, film at 11.Ã¢â‚¬Â" Someone close Techcrunch, please.